This public lecture is now available as: MP3 (please listen to the file below).  Dr Hartwich spoke to an updated version of a paper with the same title, published by the Institute of Independent Studies in Sydney.

Europe is a continent in crisis. The financial problems of many European economies became visible to the rest of world when Greece seemed to have narrowly escaped bankruptcy in May 2010. Ever since, more unpleasant data about the state of public finances in Europe have emerged, putting pressure on Europe’s common currency, the euro. With the focus on finances, it is easy to overlook that many of Europe’s current problems are not purely economic. They are the result of some basic construction errors of the European project. Above all, Europe remains a continent with countries so different that they cannot be effectively harmonised under the EU banner. Their diversity and a lack of a common European identity make it impossible to organise European affairs under the model of a national state. The EU lacks the basic constitutive element of a nation state, namely a people.

 

Given the inadequate structures of the EU, Europe is unable to come to grips with its three most difficult challenges. (1) The state of public finances in several member countries often hidden in pension liabilities. (2) The ageing of its population, compounded by low and falling birth rates and increasing life expectancy. (3) The mixed results with integrating migrants from other cultural backgrounds into mainstream society. These problems make a European recovery from its current malaise almost impossible, and Europe’s current crisis could be the beginning of a terminal decline of the European model.

 

Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich is a Research Fellow in the Economics Program at the Centre for Independent Studies. His area of expertise is local government and federalism, urban economics, European affairs and Industry policy. He is a regular public commentator on Australian and European affairs in the Australian media. Oliver studied Business Administration and Economics at Bochum University (Germany), and completed a PhD in Law at the universities of Bochum and Sydney, while working as a Researcher at the Institute of Commercial Law of Bonn University (Germany). He was Chief Economist at the British think tank Policy Exchange in London, and adviser to Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay in the UK House of Lords.
 

 

To view the flyer for this event please see: Europe’s Painful Farewell